Today
on Headline RePLAY: BioWare layoffs more Star
Wars: The Old Republic staff, EA assures fans that Battlefield 3 support
will continue and don’t expect to see Fez
patched (again) anytime soon.
A
new round of layoffs has hit the Star
Wars: The Old Republic team in BioWare Austin, which includes executive
producer Rich Vogel, who was instrumental in the development of the MMO. The
second wave of firings follows news of the MMO considering a free-to-play model,
a 400,000 subscription drop and layoffs back in May.
“As
with the launch of any MMO, the size and skillset of the teams needed to
maintain the game is different than the ones that built it,” said a statement
released by BioWare. “Starting in May, there have been staff reductions in the
BioWare Austin studio and Rich Vogel left BioWare in June. Some people have been platooned to other
projects at BioWare Austin and EA Sports/Austin.
“Others
have been released—qualifying personnel receive severance and outplacement
assistance.”
The
statement concluded by reiterating BioWare’s commitment to SWTOR by delivering new game content more frequently.
|Source:
IGN
EA reassured
fans today that it will continue to support Battlefield
3 despite news of a fourth installment being in development on Tuesday.
“DICE
and EA are dedicated to continuing our support for Battlefield 3,” said Battlefield
3 community manager Ian Tornay. “Just as we’ve continued to support and
maintain Bad Company 2, we intend to
continue providing the best Battlefield 3
experience we can well into the future and past release of End Game and Battlefield 4.
“There
are several teams at DICE,” he explained. “Starting work on Battlefield 4 does not mean that we will
be abandoning Battlefield 3 or
working any less hard to bring you the best expansions we can.
“Your
feedback absolutely matters. We will continue to use it to improve BF3 and to make Battlefield 4 even better from day one.”
|Source:
CVG
Polytron,
the developers of Fez, would fix the
game-breaking issues the first patch caused—if it wasn’t for the “tens of
thousands of dollars” it would cost to re-certify the game.
“We’re
not going to patch the patch,” says a statement released by the developer. “Why
not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to
re-certify the game.”
The
developer continues to explain that the “save file delete bug” caused by the
first patch only affects a “less than a percent of players” and that it makes “NO
SENSE AT ALL” for a small independent studio to pay “so much money” to fix it.
Polytron
noted that if Fez was released on
Steam versus Xbox LIVE Arcade, the game would have been fixed two weeks
post-release at “no cost.”
“We
hope you don’t think back on your time spent in Fez as a total waste,” said the studio. “Microsoft gave us a
choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch
(which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet
another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into
it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be ‘good
enough.’
“It
wasn’t an easy decision, but in the end, paying such a large sum of money to
jump through so many hoops just doesn’t make any sense,” Polytron concluded. “We
already owe Microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their
platform. People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for
being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE
pay THEM.”
|Source:
Kotaku
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